An attendant advanced briskly towards us. I put my hands in my pockets and tried to count my money. "Tiaras, madam? Certainly. About what price?" "Tell him about three pounds eight and six," I whispered to Miss Middleton. "Three pounds nine," I corrected, as I ran another sixpence to ground. "Here is a beautiful one at two hundred and fifty pounds." "Too much," I prompted softly. "Oh," broke in Miss Middleton brightly, "I'm so sorry--such a silly mistake! We wanted neck-chains, not tiaras! Barbara has a tiara already, hasn't she?" she appealed to me. "Two," I said quickly. "If not three." "I'm so sorry," said Miss Middleton, with a dazzling smile. "The first gentleman must have misunderstood. Of course we gave her a tiara last year." The man was disappointed; I saw that. But the smile melted him, and he went off in all friendliness. "Tiara doesn't sound very much like neck-chain," I remarked after a pause. "Oh, don't you think so? It depends how you say it. Like Beauchamp and Cholmondeley." "And what is it when pronounced properly?" "It's a chain that hangs round your neck, and when you don't quite know what to say to anybody you play with it carelessly. Same as men smoking cigarettes, only better for you." "I see. Well, here we have a hundred of the best." The attendant got to business at once. "This one," he said, holding up rather a jolly one, "comes out at ten guineas." "Tell him," I whispered to Miss Middleton, "that we've only come out with three." "That's _very_ pretty," she said. "Are those moon-stones?" "Yes, madam. The fashionable stone this year." "It's more for next year that we want it." "I should say this season. I don't think you will find a prettier one than this, madam." "It's very sweet. But aren't they unlucky, unless you happen to have been born in the right month?" She turned to me. "When is Barbara's birthday?" "May," I said unhesitatingly. "I mean March." "Anyhow," said Miss Middleton. "I know it's wrong for moonstones, because I was thinking of giving her some two years ago, and it had to "be opals instead." "We both thought of it," I said. Miss Middleton looked at me so admiringly that I began to get reckless. "Besides, we don't know the size of her neck," I went on. "And she never smokes--I mean she never doesn't know what to say to anybody. So I think we should be making a mistake if we gave her this. I do indeed. Now if it had been anybody else but Barbara----" The man looked from one to the other of us in bewilderment. "If you could show us some hatpins instead?" said Miss Middleton hurriedly, before he could open his mouth. "This is excellent," I said, as he retired in confusion; "we're working down well. All we've got to do now is to wait till he comes back and then say that we're sorry but we meant hairpins. With hair-pins you're practically there." "Supposing they only had gold ones?"